 "Members of civil defence stand on rubble at a damaged site after Israeli strikes following Israeli military's evacuation orders, in Tayr Debba, southern Lebanon on Thursday. Reuters/Representational image")
As many as 13 people were killed after Israel launched an overnight attack on one of Lebanon’s most crowded Palestinian camps in the country’s south.
While Israel said that it was targeting a Hamas compound in the area, the Palestinian terror group has asserted that there were never any military installations in Palestinian camps in Lebanon.
Israel has kept up strikes on Lebanon despite a ceasefire agreed last November that sought to halt more than a year of hostilities with Hamas ally Hezbollah, including two months of full-blown war.
Lebanon’s health ministry has reported “13 dead and a number of others wounded” in the strike, adding that “ambulances are still transporting more wounded to nearby hospitals”.
The state-run news agency said that the Israeli strikes targeted a car in a parking lot near the Khalid bin al-Walid mosque and that “subsequently it was reported that the raid also targeted” the mosque itself and a centre of the same name.
In a statement, the Israeli military said that it “struck terrorists who operated in a Hamas training compound in the Ain al-Helweh area in southern Lebanon”, adding that it was “operating against Hamas’s establishment in Lebanon”.
‘Fabrication and lies’
Hamas, on the other hand, has rejected Israeli claims and blamed it for a “brutal assault” on the Ain al-Helweh camp, adding that “claims that the targeted location was a ’training compound affiliated with the movement’ are pure fabrications and lies.”
“There are no military installations in the Palestinian camps in Lebanon,” it added.
The Israeli military released a video of a strike hitting a building, but Hamas claimed that “the targeted site was an open sports field frequented by the youth of the camp”, and that “those targeted were a group of young boys” on the field at the time.
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View AllEarlier Tuesday, Lebanon said Israeli strikes elsewhere in the country’s south killed two people. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment on those raids.
Lebanon hosts about 222,000 Palestinian refugees, according to the United Nations agency UNRWA.
With inputs from AFP